


Sunday evening feeling

by myoue



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Confessional Sex, Established Relationship, Heartache, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-20 09:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: Being in a long-distance relationship means that whenever Victor does anything cute, Yuuri will experience ten times the number of appropriate heart attacks.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to all those who maybe cannot make it to see loved ones or don't have a family to celebrate the holidays with. pls have a good merry xmas and a warm and safe holidays!
> 
> i don't really know what parts of canon are in this story. victor never lived in hasetsu? they just happen to be boyfriends after meeting each other through skating?

Sometimes, Yuuri thinks it’s not the physical distance that separates them.

The cities of Hasetsu and Saint Petersburg are over 7,000 kilometres apart, which seems like a great, great distance, certainly too far to trek on any old day trip whenever Yuuri feels like. And that’s one of the things he really wishes he could do. Just do day trips. Whenever he feels like.

But it isn’t even so bad once Yuuri tells himself to put it into perspective. The cities that are most furthest-apart, on complete opposite sides of the globe, are nearly 20,000 kilometres apart. That’s the farthest you can be. That’s like flying to Saint Petersburg and back and then some.

Wow, don’t go breaking your own heart, Yuuri tells himself.

 _Have you ever thought about living in Vladivostok?_ Yuuri types out into a text on his phone because he can’t find the tab for his online conversation with Victor on his computer, squished somewhere in between sixteen Google Maps searches and distancecalculator.net and the Wikipedia page for great-circle distance or orthodromic distance (i.e. the shortest distance between two points measured along the surface of a sphere).

He hopes Victor forgives him for hypothetically asking to uproot his life for him.

 _Hhhuhhhh why?_ comes Victor’s understandably puzzled response. _Isn’t it in the Far East?_ _I don’t know much about way out there._

 _Me neither_ , Yuuri admits.

Yuuri’s the one who brought this up, but the only real takeaway from searching about Vladivostok online is that it’s a port city so it might be similar to Hasetsu in that regard. Though, its population is still five times that of Hasetsu’s.

 _You’ve never been there?_ Yuuri wonders.

 _Nope_ , he receives from Victor, and then he starts wondering if Vladivostok has any fun winter events that could keep Victor entertained.

Yuuri lives pretty south of his country but he’s been to just about every part of Japan himself—all the way as far as Aomori where the snow packs as high as two metres above his head during wintertime, and on occasion to Hokkaido for the annual Sapporo Snow Festival. He’d drop by there if he gets booted from competition early. Instead of going home, he’ll make himself feel better by getting some hot sake and wandering around to view the sparkling lights and amazingly cut ice sculptures.

He’ll stand around pretending he’s waiting for someone amongst the couples interlocking arms. He’ll tell himself he’s a bigger deal than he is and that he came up north so no one would recognize him.

The sake will warm him right up, get him a bit drunk at the same time so these things are easier to believe, and then magically the season doesn’t feel like as much of a total loss.

Victor continues musing on in text about how he hasn’t had much interest in the rest of Russia anyway and _really only been to Saint Petersburg and Moscow._ _Never had an excuse to visit anywhere else_.

 _Not even to visit some distant uncle?_ Yuuri teases.

 _Unfortunately, don’t have any uncles,_ Victor says.

_Not even for vacation then?_

_Haven’t had a vacation in over two years :)_

_You’re kidding!!!!_ Yuuri screeches through text. Because of course Victor’s winter months are jam-packed, training or travelling all over Europe and around the rest of the world that when he has any downtime at all he probably just wants to stay home.

No vacations at all, though… That’s just absurd.

 _Even if I was allowed some time off, I don’t think I’d be let very far. Vladivostok is certainly too far. Russia’s toooo big a place_.

Victor’s being hyperbolic. He has to be. He better be.

The last comment especially stings. Just a bit. Vladivostok is way, way, way too far. Victor won’t even consider going there. How many times a year are they supposed to dedicate over twelve hours each way and thousands of dollars just on airfare to see each other? How long are things supposed to last like this?

_Ki ni shi nai de ne? Don’t worry about it, right?_

His mind is still swimming when Victor sends that. Though, he can't help letting it pull a smile out of him.

_Ehhhh, you know that?_

Despite the image that Victor is a princess locked away in a tower surrounded by a felt hat-wearing fire-breathing dragon, maybe the only thing he has enough downtime for is learning random Japanese phrases to impress Yuuri with.

 _Of course! And others too._ Victor begins typing out: _Daijoubu Tanjoubi Omedetou Aishiteru! Suki!_

Oh, god. Yuuri covers half his face so he has to type with one hand. _Suki~_

_Suki~~~~~~!_

Yuuri nearly cries at his desk. Victor really must be practicing on his own, which, ah, does so many things to Yuuri’s heart, thinking about how dedicated Victor is to learning Japanese for him. He pictures Victor with stacks of Japanese textbooks sitting all around him, glasses on his face, pencil to his lip, studying hard.

This is killing him. Who decided Yuuri has to sit here, abusing his wandering imagination, until he’s completely and utterly dissolved in his seat?

 _Shouldn’t you be getting to sleep?_ Victor reminds him after their little back and forth has exhausted Victor’s current vocabulary, which hadn’t been very large to begin with.

But Yuuri wants to keep doing this all night long. He’ll destroy his sleeping pattern if it means Victor can learn Japanese phrases to his heart’s content, getting to say all sorts of things that Yuuri will store away and keep to himself for the long lonely winter nights.

_Don’t stay up too late, okay? Isn’t it past midnight there? Are you sleeping already? Am I sending too many texts?_

Yes, you are, Victor.

It’s times like these when his hands turn on autopilot. Yuuri picks up his phone, hits the call icon next to Victor’s name and then waits for the ringing to stop. It only takes one.

He doesn’t know what Victor’s doing right now but his response is immediate. Yuuri can still see his cheshired grin. “ _Hello? Yuuri? Have you decided to use your voice to wish me goodnight?_ ”

Yuuri breathes out, closes his eyes, feels his heart swirl. Hearing Victor’s voice is so relieving that Yuuri quickly closes out of two leftover tabs for Google Images of Vladivostok architecture and four for real estate websites comparing apartment rental prices—done only out of sheer curiosity. He was getting ahead of himself, and the websites were all in Russian anyway so it wasn’t as if he could understand anything enough to actually follow through.

“Did you know… Vladivostok is only a thousand kilometres from Hasetsu?” Yuuri says despite trying (and failing) to rein himself back in. He doesn’t mean to sound like this, wishes he had more of the mental strength to close the one tab that’s been doing the most damage to him all this time: a visual representation of the flight path from Saint Petersburg to Hasetsu—hardly a stone’s throw away.

“ _Oh_ ,” Victor says, tone somewhat taken aback, probably wondering why they’re back on that now. And then after a long tangent of silence when Yuuri doesn’t elaborate anything more, Victor lights up the phone with the sparkle of his laughter, then says, “ _How far is a thousand kilometres?_ ”

“It’s…” A lot closer than 7,000.

Yuuri licks his lips, shakes the thought from his mind. It really doesn’t matter if they’re 7,000 or 1,000 kilometres away after all. After some point, it’s all the same. If Victor’s not here, he might as well be as far as outer space, sending messages from another galaxy. He’s here texting Yuuri and he's here talking to Yuuri, but he’s not  _here enough_.

“It’s a pretty big city?” Yuuri says, not knowing where to go from here. “The population is six hundred thousand. Okay, I know you’re used to a lot bigger so maybe it’s actually a downgrade. But it’s not remote by any means. I dunno, I guess I just thought that was pretty interesting.”

“ _Pretty interesting_ ,” Victor echoes, contemplative. “ _Not as bustling as Saint Petersburg but not as cozy as Hasetsu._ ”

“So, it’s just right?”

“ _Hm_.”

That’s not a yes or a no or even a maybe. That’s Victor-speak for “you stumble and fall when you’ve got something on your mind, and you’re terrible at trying to hide it.”

“A plane ride would only take an hour,” Yuuri mentions.

“ _Yeah, it would_.”

“We could do day trips to visit each other.”

“ _I doubt it. Aeroflot has about a thirty percent chance of arriving on time_.”

Yuuri laughs, leaning his head down against the desk, presses the phone close into his ear.

Even if Victor’s about to chastise him for saying ridiculous things that’ll never come to fruition anyway, he keeps his hand on it, afraid to let it go in case the phone slips from his grasp or he misses something very important. Phones and signal and cell reception between continents can be pretty unpredictable, and Yuuri wants to hear it all, everything, anything Victor might say to him. No matter what it is.

“ _Wouldn’t it be nice…_ ” Victor says instead, “ _...if we could spend those waiting times together? I wouldn’t detest flying as much._ ”

Yuuri imagines what that would be like.

And normally they would FaceTime but Yuuri doesn’t want to do that right now. He wants to focus all his attention on listening to Victor’s voice, however crackly or lagged it is. If he were to see or even think about Victor’s face right now, all smiley because Victor smiles when he doesn’t know what else to do—Yuuri feels so sure he’s going to completely come apart.

“I miss you, Victor,” he says, loud enough so the phone is able to pick up his voice, but quick enough that if Victor can’t quite catch it then he’ll ask for Yuuri to repeat himself, and Yuuri gladly will.

But he doesn’t have to. Victor hears him perfectly.

“ _I miss you, too_.” Victor’s voice finally dips towards sounding so uncharacteristically sad, but he’s trying so hard to make the best of it. “ _I miss you so much, Yuuri._ ”

There’s a buzz that runs through Yuuri, up his arms, up his spine. He basks in it, bathes in it, wishes it wouldn’t stop. “You do?”

“ _Of course I do!_ ”

“You mean it?”

“ _Yes!_ ”

His heart stops beating so fast. In one simple second, he can calm down now. “...Okay, then. Okay, um. That’s all, then. Good night, Victor.”

“ _Yuuri, wait! You… you can always come live with me in Saint Petersburg, you know? I know I keep bringing it up, but it’s really not so bad. It gets cold sometimes but we can bundle you up in, like, a lot of scarves. Seventeen scarves. I’ll hug you in my arms a lot.”_

Oh.

“You don’t have to do that.”

 _“It won’t be so bad—I want to do it!_ ”

“Don’t push yourself.”

“ _Please say yes?_ ”

“I know…” Yuuri reassures him, at least hopes it comes across as reassurance for his lack of an answer to Victor’s proposal of this every time, more often completely fizzling out whenever Victor mentions living with him. Whenever he thinks about being able to snuggle up close to Victor every night. It’s too much for him. “Seventeen scarves is… just... a lot of scarves,” Yuuri murmurs.

After a beat, Victor seems to agree, “ _You’re right. Instead of seventeen crap scarves, I’ll buy you… nine… nine really high quality scarves instead_.”

Yuuri lets out a laugh. “Better.” Though, he doubts Victor will actually remember to buy even one when the time comes, but it’s the thought that counts.

“ _You’ll still visit me for the holidays, right?_ ”

The lilt in his voice turns hopeful, as if this wasn’t already discussed between them before. Decided well before they left each other's arms at the airport in Barcelona when Yuuri had to catch his flight back home.

Yes, of course Yuuri will be back to visit. Why does Victor even need to ask that?

Yuuri can hear the phasing in and out of noise in the background on Victor’s side—the clinking of cutlery and vague streams of Russian.

But Victor doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to whatever’s physically happening around him, keen on listening instead for Yuuri’s answer. Yuuri doesn’t know how or why this is always the one thing he’s sure of, among all of the infinite other things he’s not sure of, only going off of how attentive and caring and patiently listening Victor sounds in response to him and only him.

“ _Yuurriii, please hurry and come. I’m so cold and lonely without you_.”

“I thought the cold wasn’t so bad there?”

“ _It isn’t_.”

“Victor… actually, I don’t care all that much about the cold… I actually just…”

“ _It won’t be cold when you’re here with me_.”

“I wish we could just—”

He cuts himself off, squinting into the darkness, mouth unable to form words, not even able to utter an apology when for the first time during conversation Yuuri lets the phone slip from his ear to hold at arm’s length.

The tinny, distant sound of “ _Yuuri?_ ” sounds very far away. But he’s going to leave Victor hanging for only a few moments.

Because he just can’t stand it sometimes, letting the easiest things affect him like this. Born a charmer, always a charmer—Victor doesn’t even have to touch him or take his time caressing his fingers against Yuuri’s palm to make it so unbearably hard to stay away.

So often there’s a time lag where they end up talking over each other until it gets so ridiculous they both have to stop, meet each other with “ _You go ahead_ ” in unison and then “ _No, go ahead!_ ” in exasperated unison again. Because the sound has to travel quite far, over the mountainous Russian expanse and the Sea of Japan, just to get to each other.

But Yuuri is plagued with almost always being able to catch what Victor says when it’s never the other way around. The awareness that this is very much a horrible romantic drama they’re currently living in isn’t enough not to make his heart go crazy every time Victor throws out some off-hand cheesy thing that’s  still audible all the way from the corner of Yuuri’s bedroom, with Victor feigning ignorance while Yuuri suffers alone under the covers of his blanket.

Speechless until it’s far too late to say anything, nothing ever works out well enough to feel totally, honestly satisfied with how often they seem to miss each other.

And Victor keeps pretending he’s about to sleep soon so he insists Yuuri should too, even though it’s nearing only 7 PM for him and there’s no way Yuuri can sleep after the night culminates to this.

His threats are all talk, and it’s the only thing Yuuri can rightfully call him out on from several time zones away.

In the end, Victor presses to stay on the line with him, eating his dinner silently, while Yuuri tucks a pillow under his chin and goes through the process of booking a ticket online to Saint Petersburg—the earliest direct flight on the Eve of Russian Christmas.

-

Victor greets him at Pulkovo International Airport by nearly running headfirst into a solid glass pane, but managing to finally get a kiss successfully in front of a dozen flashing cameras. _Victor, this is so embarrassing_ , Yuuri had planned to say in advance because he knew very well this would happen. But it turns out the long forgotten touch of Victor’s lips on him, reminiscent of a time where they’d almost cracked both their heads on ice during a competition, feels too good to interrupt.

-

“Hello everyone! Thanks for waiting. I’ve brought the one and only: Japan’s Ace, Yuuri Katsuki!” Victor declares this to a restaurant full of Russian skaters and a tableful of Christmas dinner.

“H-Hi,” Yuuri says with a one-handed wave and a sheepish smile.

“Oh, finally. I’m starving.” Yuri P. is the first to shovel his face full of turkey before receiving an elbow to the side from Georgi. “What? I _just_ saw him at GPF. They haven’t seen each other for, what, a couple weeks and you’re acting like he just returned home from war. Holy shit. You all are something else.”

“He did come back from war.”

“He’s a guest.”

“Shush, Yurio.”

“Tyi idiot.”

After they sit down and commotion in Russian begins again, Yuuri leans over to whisper in Victor’s ear, “I thought it was just going to be the two of us?” He’d just come from the airport not an hour ago after all, not that he’s not disappointed. Just surprised. It feels like Victor’s entire ice club is here.

“I might have let slip to Mila what restaurant we were going to.” Victor gives him a small smile, placing a hand on Yuuri’s leg and squeezing. It has Yuuri nearly convulsing. “It’s fine, right? Are you hungry? You’re not too exhausted to eat?”

“Oh—yeah! I mean, no, of course it’s fine. I haven’t washed my face in twenty-two hours but hopefully no one minds.”

“No one minds! Let them have their fun. The kids haven’t seen you in awhile,” Victor says.

The kids, meaning the up-and-coming soon-to-be Russian Junior Champions at the ice club that latch onto Yuuri’s legs every time he visits. Yuuri doesn’t know why they do when Victor’s right there in front of them everyday, but maybe it’s because Yuuri isn’t as tall so they can actually see his face. And it might have something to do with the fact that Victor is always picking them up and swinging them around, intimidating them out of pair skating forever.

Under the table, Yuuri slides a hand underneath Victor’s, lacing through his fingers, taking hold—if only to prevent Victor’s hand on his thigh from arousing more sweet feelings in him than it should. Maybe pair skating will be in their future one day?

When the vodka starts coming around, Yuuri is already shaking his head before anyone can say anything to him.

“Come on!” Mila says. “Just one!” But she has a twinkle in her eye like she knows it won’t end up being just one.

Which is exactly why Yuuri is against it. “No no, I’m so tired. I guarantee you I’ll fall asleep if I do,” Yuuri tells her.

“You won’t,” all the older skaters assure him in unison. But even as Yuuri tries to explain that he literally just came off an exhausting flight, he’s only followed by choruses of “ _Yuuri Katsuki is not a sleepy drunk_ ” down the table.

It has Yuuri melting into the seat of his chair, with Victor laughing, wrapping a protective arm around Yuuri’s shoulders, and planting kiss after kiss to the side of his forehead. “You’re too cute,” he mutters with a smile into the shell of Yuuri’s ear. And then loudly to everyone else: “I won’t let them make fun of you.”

One of them shouts, “Victor Nikiforov, you’re the only one here who fell head over heels in love with him because he was like that!”

Ahhhhhh, no. That’s totally unfair, Yuuri thinks, and so so so totally untrue. If only they could all understand. They have it all wrong. If only Victor especially could understand that it’s not Yuuri who’s the cute one in this relationship.

-

Yuuri wakes up the next morning to Victor’s head smushed underneath his chin, arms around his middle, straggly silver hair tickling his nose, and the familiar scent of Victor’s apartment in Saint Petersburg that he hadn’t quite gotten to enjoy taking in the night before.

He remembers making a dizzying promise to Victor to _stay by his side and never ever leave ever again_ the night before in the midst of a heated moment. Not that it means one of them is moving to Vladivostok. And not that it means one of them is retiring from competitive skating for good.

But if Yuuri could spend every day like this, falling asleep to Victor’s “ _Oyasuminasai_ ” and then waking up to an even huskier “ _Dobroye utro, Yuuri_ ” in the mornings, then he’ll need a little more time to think about it. He'll need to stay in Victor's arms just a litle longer to make all of these difficult decisions in his life easier to take on. So, it’s a good thing Yuuri had hesitated on buying that return trip ticket.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote more bc i am a big fool. a little bit more of that sunday evening feel, so just be forewarned. also rating upped to mature (for sex reasons, no other reason)

It’s too difficult to use large amounts of foreign currency with any amount of confidence yet, so Yuuri slides over his credit card and requests to pay in installments.

He’s been thinking a lot about what life would be like living in Russia, specifically what it’d be like walking the streets of Saint Petersburg. He imagines himself going down the same routes everyday, becoming familiar with the paths and the shops along the cobblestoned sidewalks until it becomes a daily routine to memorize the cyrillic scripts for breakfast and coffee for two hundred Russian Rubles.

He’s been through foreign before. He’s lived in the United States and made it out to tell the tale.

Though, Yuuri supposes he’d always held it in the back of his head that it would be a temporary trip. He’d be coming back at some point, even if that some point happened to be after a longer period of time than was justified to never quite feel settled in. True, five years was maybe too long to keep using the expensive coin washes or to keep re-signing up for things like Visitor Passes or to constantly hesitate on making any real connections with anyone except for just one over-enthusiastic friend in that whole time.

But this time, he’s determined not to have that mindset. He’s not going to throw up during the first few days here, not going to feel the same crushing deep-set loneliness that he had before when any amount of travel meant planning everything ten moves in advance and every human interaction was utterly unexpected. Still, his better mood will mostly be attributed to the fact that Victor’s with him. Victor will be beside him this time. The whole time.

“Oh, thank god,” is the first thing Yuuri is greeted with when he opens the door to Victor’s apartment, save for Victor practically throwing his arms around him. Victor’s got his shoes on, coat half over one shoulder, and cell phone in hand.

Yuuri steps in, closes the door behind him. Then, on second thought, leaves it partially ajar. “Are you going somewhere?”

“I was just about to go looking for you.”

“For me?” Yuuri questions, clueless.

“You weren’t around when I woke up. And-And it’s still early and you weren’t answering your phone, so…” Victor quickly pockets it into his pants, shrugging out of his coat. He seems to bite his lip, looking off to the side with his hair falling over his face in that way that Yuuri had always thought, and still thinks, is so devilishly, outstandingly handsome. “I thought, maybe, you’d gone back… to Hasetsu. Or something.”

“What? What time is it?”

“Nine AM.”

“Oh.”

He’d woken up and left when it was still rather dark out, jetlagged to hell, and didn’t want to bother Victor who was still completely knocked out after the previous night. He’d let Yuuri in, insisting that the flight over had to have been exhausting enough already only to be exacerbated by a dinner with the skating club right after, and then also because it was their first time together in awhile, so Yuuri had special permission to do whatever he wanted with him. It’s the reason why Victor still looks the aftermath of absolutely wrecked, messed up hair and baggy eyes, currently slouched over awkwardly on one leg and hand braced against the kitchen counter. Yuuri can’t believe Victor was about to go out looking like that.

In his coat pocket, he fingers the small velvet box with the gold ring snug inside that Victor had once said was a dream of his to have on his finger by the time he dies. It hadn’t been said to anyone in particular at the time, especially not about Yuuri, being well before they’d even gotten together.

But in Yuuri’s own opinion, if he has to have his heart broken at all by _the_ Victor Nikiforov, he wants to do it with that gold band in his hand. Not necessarily _on_ his hand or around his own finger. Not if it isn’t able to make it that far. And it’d be a little weird to have one half of the pair rings around one person’s finger and the other not, wouldn’t it?

“I didn’t buy a return ticket this time,” Yuuri says, wondering if he might have forgotten to tell Victor that.

“I know.”

Oh, perhaps not.

“Doesn’t really stop you from upping and leaving, though…” Victor trails off. “You could always get it when you get to the airport. Or, or you could call the front desk and do it over the phone like they do in movies when they want the earliest flight out.” Victor has that tone in his voice that says _I’d always wanted to do something like that_.

It’s at this point Yuuri decides he can properly close the door behind him now, getting off his shoes and his coat while Victor watches him like a hawk despite looking guiltier and guiltier by the second for doing it, like he’s making sure Yuuri really isn’t going anywhere.

“I’m not that kind of person…” Yuuri tells him, squinting a little, throwing his coat with the box still in the pocket over the arm of the couch in the living room. He’s never usually one to be messy and lazy in someone else’s place, but Victor likes to bring out the unreasonableness in him. “...You really thought I’d come all the way here just to use you for my perverted needs and then leave?”

Victor laughs, wavering a little, shaking his head. He comes over to put his arms around Yuuri, hugging him hard and close to his body. “Yeah? You’re right. You’re right, you’re right. I don’t know… what I was thinking.”

-

Saint Petersburg isn’t cold at all, not nearly as much as Yuuri expects it to be after Victor had hyped it up to an Arctic Tundra.

But that’s no excuse not to tuck and roll every single one of his limbs under Victor’s soft bedding (silk, imported) after coming home from the breezy outside. The sheets are more heavily scented of Victor than anything else in the room, and it’s been having Yuuri feeling high off it for at least the last few days.

“You’re a fan of it, too? The Russian architecture,” Yuuri muses to Victor, though he hasn’t had the need to look anything up any of the sort on Google Images in a while.

Victor tears his gaze from staring out of his five-star view window at this sixth hour in the morning, dawn having only just broken. He has a mug of tea in hand and a habit of waking himself up too early on normal circumstances, no matter if he has the day off or not. “I’m not looking at the buildings. Just the people,” he says.

Yuuri makes an acknowledging sound. “There’s something about the people, too—city-people. Everyone dresses so stylishly. I thought it was just you.”

“Don’t make me jealous,” Victor says, feathers ruffled.

Yuuri hums appreciatively into the pillow, shoving his hands further into the bedding. “So come back to bed then.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Yuuri sticks a hand out on Victor’s side of the bed to pat against the mattress, trying his best to sound cute, persuading, irresistible with the blanket up to his chin and sinful eyes. “Please come back?”

He never thought he was very good at things like this but the success rate for being able to seduce Victor into submission is surprisingly high, seeing as he’s already dumping the rest of the tea into his mouth, setting the cup down on the side table, and sliding under the covers to pull Yuuri up and close against him. “You’re unbelievable,” Victor purrs, reduced to incapacity. It feels like if his arms aren’t tight enough around Yuuri, it won’t be enough. “You test me like this.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Yuuri says cheekily.

“What else about Russia deserves your praise?” Victor breathes, feeling selfish and unsatisfied. “I want you to think long and hard about your answer.” This isn’t about Russia. Not at all. Not even one bit.

But Yuuri does think for a second, brushing a hand to the back of Victor’s hair, staring longingly at the top of his head. “Pirozhki.”

Victor remains unperturbed. “...Oh-kay. I’ll give you that one. But not the answer I was expecting.”

“Matryoshka dolls,” Yuuri offers.

“Umm… seriously, really not what I was looking for...”

“Oh, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy—”

“Alright, when would you have had the time to read that?” Victor sulks, maneuvering around to nibble his teeth gently against Yuuri’s clavicle as if that’s supposed to be punishment of some sort. “I mean, not that those aren’t great choices but.”

Yuuri laughs. They really aren’t great choices at all. Yuuri’s never even read Tolstoy. Maybe, if he asks very nicely, he can get Victor to buy him an authentic Russian copy of this old classic, they’ve gotta have it somewhere, and Yuuri can lug the thing and all of its one thousand pages back home to Japan. He can spend his time trying to read it to its entirety instead of missing Victor like crazy.

“What’s the _absolute_ best thing to come out of Russia?” Victor tries again, patting an encouraging hand to Yuuri’s lower back, rubbing little circles in his skin just because he can. “It can be anything… a thing, a _person_. Something or some _one_. Anything. Any _one_...”

“Russian Darling and National Treasure Evgenia Medvedeva.”

“ _Yuurii!!!_ ”

“Ahh, okay, okay!” Yuuri gasps, choking out laughter when Victor rolls over on top of him, putting all his weight in pressing Yuuri into the bed, making a mess of the blankets between their legs. “It’s you! You’re the best thing to come out of Russia, Victor!”

Victor kisses hard into the juncture under Yuuri’s jaw, marking a wet open-mouthed path down his neck, pausing: “Let me be the first to say, you’re the only one who’s ever made me shamelessly beg for someone’s attention.”

“You have it,” Yuuri tells him, serious this time. “You don’t have to beg. I was only kidding before. Everyone knows you’re Russia’s Darling.”

“Am I _your_ darling?”

“Of course you are.”

Victor practically flutters. “I’m greedy, you know. Just being your darling’s not going to be enough for me. I want to be your one and only, your one true love… your handsome sexy coach that you can’t stop having indecent thoughts of.”

Yuuri laughs. “You really don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say something like that.” He doesn’t even have to think about it—Yuuri has notebooks and notebooks of Victor’s name to prove it. But he pauses anyway to hold Victor’s face, softing the backs of his fingers to Victor’s cheek, letting the longing take over his voice. “You’ll have to be satisfied with _celebrity crush_ , at least for the first ten or so years. But you already knew that.”

“Woah, you had a crush on me for ten years? How embarrassing.”

“More like, I’ve been _in love_ with you for ten years.”

Victor misses a very obvious, tangible beat. It’s suddenly feeling very warm under the blanket. “R-Really. Gosh. Oh, man… oh man, confessing something like that, ha ha ha, wow. You must be pretty embarrassed right now.”

“Who’s the one embarrassed?”

“...You, obviously… Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me...”

Truly unbelievable, Yuuri thinks.

“Also, it’s not a big deal but why do I feel like crying?” Victor asks.

“Oh, Victor…!”

Is it insane to think Yuuri’s been rubbing off on him?

It almost looks like he’s going to keep using Yuuri’s chest as a safe haven, but instead he does something brave. He shifts in the blankets, moving up to peck one lasting kiss to Yuuri’s cheek, soft and tender and despairing, and then sliding down, once more, quick, to Yuuri’s lips. _I know, alright, it’s me who’s embarrassed after all—I love you, I love you, I love you, okay!_

“I’m going to keep bothering you,” Victor mumbles as a last ditch effort. “Forever. This is what you signed up for.”

“That’s all I want,” Yuuri nearly cuts him off, almost exasperatedly, like something like this should be obvious. He squeezes Victor’s horribly blushed face between his hands, even though Victor keeps trying to move out of his grip to look away. But Yuuri, of all people, insisting things are obvious despite succumbing so often to such thoughts himself—it’s just hypocritical of him. “Be the same for me. Look only at me, too. That’s all there is to it, okay?”

Victor closes his eyes, nodding. “Okay.”

“You’re so silly.”

“I’m not!”

“You are,” Yuuri affirms.

And dramatic. Victor only wants to be spoiled. Not to have anyone walk out on him in the mornings. For once in his life. He tends to talk so coolly normally and over the phone so nobody else has any idea what he’s really like.

But even so, when the distance between them becomes so closely reminiscent of what things used to be like before this—before the nightly phone calls, before the inseparable pining even while they’re together, the touching, the unforeseen half-confessions dripping off their tongues at every other word, before Yuuri was in the picture at all—the backward thoughts start morphing into something Yuuri can’t get out of his head, either. Their reunions are anything but few and far between, but he still finds Victor clinging unusually long to him.

He can’t truly find Victor unreasonable. Yuuri’s always felt like he could tell exactly what Victor’s thoughts were at any given moment. Skating Psychology is what Takeshi said Yuuri had a PhD in, focusing on Victor Studies. Funny, Yuuri had thought at the time.

But for all his unintended seduction technique and ability to write essays about Victor falling endlessly in love, in love, in love again through every skating motion, he wishes he could instead be better able to put Victor’s mind at ease. It’d be a more useful superpower to do back what Victor’s always been able to do for him. His coaching technique had been sub-par (and that’s being generous), but Yuuri learned a heck of a lot more about life and love from Victor than how to do a consistent quad flip.

-

Victor asks one more time for Yuuri to move in with him while they’re still lying in bed. It becomes something so persistent that it’s less of a question and more like a repeated reminder to which Yuuri, still, hasn’t formed a proper answer to yet.

This time is different, though. Victor starts off with a soft, wishful “ _Please?_ ” before asking, and then once more, again, just as soft, after the question is done. Yuuri had done one thing, though—he’d really thought about the matter a lot since the last time Victor had asked him to.

“Do you want to do it one more time before we get up?” Yuuri suggests, fairly confident in this at least.

“You can’t resolve this by offering sex instead of answering me every time.”

Oh.

Well, alright.

He really thought Victor would take to that.

“Let me have another nap first then,” Yuuri drawls out, closing his eyes, still getting what he’d wanted in the end with Victor back in bed and arms securely around him.

But Victor, far far far too patient to be human, keeps nudging into Yuuri before he can fall back asleep. “I still actually want sex, though,” Victor mumbles.

When Victor pushes into him, so despicably warm, he takes hold of Yuuri’s hand on the pillow near his head. And Yuuri wonders in that moment what it would be like if he finally had the courage to take out that ring from his coat pocket and put it on Victor’s finger.

“You’re-You’re so mean,” Victor whines next to his ear, lifting both of Yuuri’s legs up into the air against his arms so it feels like Yuuri can’t ground himself. Victor’s doing that on purpose, and Yuuri can tell from the way Victor ignores him twisting hotly underneath him that he’s trying to get his attention. “Every time!” Victor growls, but it sounds weak. “I’ve been asking for ages, and the truth is… you love me but you can’t bear the thought of living with me, isn’t that it?”

Yuuri’s actually just a little surprised they’re talking about this right now.

“That’s… that’s not it.”

He’s dizzy with feeling, but more so with the fact that Victor is actually pushing him on this for the first time. Literally pushing him.

Victor bites into the shell of his ear, and Yuuri has to bite down on his lip to swallow the sound. “It is,” Victor grounds out, continuing to rock ever so slightly, so sickeningly slow, against him. “You’re, ahh, so cute over the phone. You told me you missed me in that amazing voice, I couldn’t stand it. It broke my heart. Why did I keep letting you leave when it was so clear to me that you hated doing it?”

“M-Move, please, Victor.”

Victor does thrust once very shallowly into him, almost like he can’t help it, and then stops again. He’s trying so determinedly not to succumb to Yuuri’s every wish, but it’s a habit he can’t easily break out of.

He leans down and in, intimately close, so Yuuri has no chance of mishearing, brushing his lips to the edge of Yuuri's ear. “Tell me it’s fine. Tell me it’s me. I’ll do whatever it takes to make things comfortable for you. Whatever you want. Anything.”

“It’s not you.”

“...I’m no genius at love, so maybe I have a better chance at seeing the flaws and articulating a better way for, for us, than I ever did at trying to coach skating...”

It’s starting to become unbearable with Victor just sitting there, so Yuuri has to snake a hand down to relieve some of the pressure. He lets out a seething gasp, and, hearing that, Victor does the same.

“God, I’ll get you off first. We’re getting nowhere.” Victor starts moving again, to Yuuri’s utter relief.

“Marry me, Victor,” he blurts in a half-moan, breath slewing out all at once.

Then, just as soon as he’d started Victor stops falteringly again, stuttering and having to put his hand down on the pillow like a high-speed train abruptly pulling on the breaks. He pries open his eyes after having closed them in an attempt to indulge in the pleasure, only to stare down now appalled, flabbergasted, and unable to hide his honest devastation at Yuuri. “What...? Wh... Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll go faster. You don’t have to—have to say it like that. You know I’ll take it seriously—”

“Sorry.” Yuuri coughs, licking his lips, desperate. “ _Will_ you marry me, Victor?”

Victor sucks in something like a sharp, offended breath. Shit, shit, shit. This frustration is making things so much more difficult.

“Wait... are you actually...” Victor starts.

The ring is still in his jacket in the other room, Yuuri wants to say, but he’s afraid of wasting his breath on any more words that won’t help the situation, when he’s feeling so pushed to his limits like this—not just with the building heat, but with the way Victor’s been absolutely right the whole time. Yuuri’s been running back home, to Japan, his comfort zone, too many times to count.

“I’m-I’m afraid,” Yuuri forces himself to say without waiting to hear Victor’s response. He grips onto Victor’s lower arm, and Victor is stunned into silence anyway, so Yuuri puts it to himself to keep going even when it feels like he can’t properly catch his breath. “I love the way you text me and I love missing you. I love hoping for a future together that seems so distant and pretty, and I-I’m terrified of losing that. When I picture us—getting so used to holding hands that we won’t do it anymore, or, or arguing over the stupidest things, or when the silences between us turn from comfortable to just not wanting to talk to each other…”

Yuuri wants to apologize profusely—for everything. For never giving Victor a proper answer. For explaining this all so poorly and doing so at such an inopportune time. For taking so long to do such a thing in the first place that it feels like he’s the immensely silly one.

“I have... a ring in my... my, my coat for you…” He wheezes that out so disjointedly, he’s pretty sure Victor didn’t catch it.

If Yuuri thinks he’s breathing hard, it’s nothing compared to Victor, sounding like he’s about to go into cardiac arrest. He hasn’t taken his eyes off Yuuri, hasn’t let go of his hand since they started.

And then in the next moment Victor is crying, only noticeable because Yuuri, despite no glasses, can still see the glistening tears drop quietly, beautifully, down Victor’s cheekbones, until they fall onto Yuuri’s chest. His rapid breathing isn’t part of any hysterical sobbing. He’s crying silently.

“But I’ll still love you forever,” Yuuri tells him sincerely, flinching when he feels wet against his face. “In one way or another, no matter where I am. That, I can promise you.”

Because loving Victor from afar is the only thing Yuuri knows how to do. It’s what he’s good at. It’s what he’ll live by and die by until the ends of the Earth.

They’ve had a lot of first mornings together. But each time something different happens. This time, Victor shifts downwards on the bed, pulling out only a little, so he can lean in and kiss Yuuri comfortably, gently, tasting so salty from the tears that mingle with his lips.

He hugs Yuuri to him, tells him, _Yuuri... Yuuri... I do, I mean, I’ll marry you…!_ in words that convey nothing less than that things will be okay, that he'll be trying his ultimate best and make damn sure of it.

Because if there’s one thing Victor knows intimately how to do and how to do well, it’s create love and put all of his heart into it—no matter the trials, the tribulations, or the amount of humming Yuuri’s anxious heart constantly makes against his own. Yuuri thinks he’ll miss what it's like to have an empty space on his finger, but it doesn’t cross his mind ever again.

 


End file.
